Cages or Wings?
by TechnicolorNina
Summary: What would have happened if Jaeger had run the other way? A/U from Episode 44. Crow and Jaeger, lots of snark, implied onesided tailshipping. Written for Sepsku.


**Title**: Cages or Wings?  
**Author**: Nina/ **TechnicolorNina**  
**Fandom**: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds  
**Pairing/Characters**: Jaeger, Crow, lots of offscreen Yuusei, implied **onesided tailshipping.**  
**Word Count**: 7 566  
**Spoilers:** A/U beginning halfway through episode 44.  
**Story Rating**: **R/M** for **Crow's mouth**.  
**Story Summary**: What would have happened if Jaeger had run the other way? Now with claustrophobic Crow, serious crushing, lots of cuss words, and more!  
**Notes**: A HUGE SHOUT OUT to my wonderful, amazing, FANTASTIC beta **emeralddarkness** . And also to the lovely **thealienfromuranus **for her feedback and amusing comments on Crow and Dark Signer ass.  
**Warnings**: Crow swears. A lot. Even more than he does in canon.  
**Feedback**: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)  
**Special Thanks/Dedications**: This story is for the lovely **Sepsku.**

* * *

_Cages or wings?  
Which do you prefer?  
Ask the birds  
Fear or love, baby?  
Don't say the answer  
Actions speak louder than words_

What does it take  
To wake up a generation?  
How can you make someone  
Take off and fly?  
If we don't wake up  
And shake up the nation  
We'll eat the dust of the world  
Wondering why

~ "Louder Than Words," Tick, Tick . . . BOOM

* * *

Crow had heard before that "never" was the word God (or the gods, or some god, anyway) listened for when he (or they, or it) was looking for a laugh, but he'd never really understood it until the day the world went dark.

It was a simple enough matter to start with – he'd been chasing Kiryu (and any other Dark Signers he might possibly find), ready to drag home a couple of evil bodies for Yuusei like a kitten with its first prey – and instead of a Dark Signer, he'd run into the demented little clown who ran some branch of Security that Crow had, to date, miracle of miracles, not yet fallen afoul of. And so, of course, he challenged the little bastard to a duel. Which he'd been two turns away from winning when the ground started to shake, damn it all.

"An earthquake?" Crow looked down at the floor, concerned. Some part of him was incredibly afraid of earthquakes – a fear shared by everyone in Satellite old enough to remember – or to have some vague blur of what _might_ be a memory, in Crow's case – what had happened seventeen years ago. His minor disquiet was not in the least alleviated by the jackass across from him starting to panic.

"Has it started already?!"

Crow was about to ask what the fuck that was supposed to mean when the grimy warehouse window lit up a brilliant purple. "What the – what's going on?"

"This is terrible!" The clown yanked his deck out of his duel disk "I hadn't thought it'd start this quickly!" He turned and started back the way he'd come, paused, turned the other way, and darted further into the shadows of the warehouse. Crow followed him, unsnapping and reeling in his cuffs automatically as he went. He was good at it; he didn't even have to pause to jam them into his pocket.

"Hey! You can't just run off in the middle of a duel that way, you – "

Ahead of him was a door, standing half-open. Crow slipped through it just before the evil little bastard had the chance to slam it shut. The tiny asshole leaned against it to push it fully shut as quickly as possible, puffing in a manner in a manner Crow probably would have found funny as hell if he hadn't been too busy taking in the size of the room around him.

" . . . _shit_." The pissant could forfeit if he wanted; Crow just wanted out. .He turned around to haul ass back out the door and froze in shock. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

It was obvious – the Security bastard had taken off his coat and was stuffing it into and against the crack under the door - but combined with a room that could not possibly be more than eight steps from side to side, the sight was anything but comforting. Crow watched in disbelief as the jackass finished jamming the coat under the door, then breathed an obvious sigh of relief, stepped back and smoothed the sleeves of his blouse automatically. Crow really wished he hadn't. He was having a hard enough time keeping panic at bay, and the sight of the stopped-up crack only made him feel even less like he could still breathe.

"You. I want out of here."

The other smirked, an expression that kind of made Crow want to throw the tiny idiot against the nearest wall. "I wouldn't, if I were you." He pointed to the window – the miraculously intact window – over the old desk. Crow, not one to stand on ceremony at the best of times, pulled himself onto the desk and stood on it to look out.

The world beyond was black.

"What the fuck?" Crow scrambled off the desk and peered out the other miraculously-intact window in the door. The warehouse through which they had just run had disappeared; it was darker than midnight in solitary during a new moon. Crow decided not to waste time on the rusty-looking bolt – those stupid things could stick like a bitch – and pounded one fist against the glass. It held. He slammed his fist against it again, the tiny rodent-teeth of panic starting to eat at the edges of his consciousness. The glass didn't even quiver. He yanked off his bandanna to wrap around his hand to try again, and then a hand much smaller than even his was pulling his arm away from the window. In spite of his need to get away, to get out, to get _air_, Crow couldn't help wondering how the tiny freak could possibly have the strength to pull his arm from that angle.

"Do you want to get us both killed?" The voice was a hiss; there wasn't even a pretense of goodwill in it anymore. Crow was reminded, in a vague and half-panic-stricken way, of the day he'd met Daichi, when Daichi had still been a nameless little boy crying in the back of a ruined game shop, cowering and pointing at a small but dangerous-looking snake crawling amid crumbled green tiles. Crow knew how he'd felt.

Even the murky light from the window was gone. Crow wasn't sure it could get much worse. At least he couldn't see the walls anymore, and that was –

He heard the slide of a drawer, the snap of plastic, and then there was a battery-operated lantern sitting on the desk. In its light the room seemed smaller than ever. Crow couldn't help moaning aloud.

"What _is_ that shit?"

"Highly unpleasant," the little – no, the fucking _midget_, Crow was short enough to know abnormally small when he saw it – answered. "And since I, at least, value my life enough that I wish to still be in possession of it ten minutes from now, we'll remain here for the time being." He turned, sat, pulled out his computer, and uploaded a file. Crow clenched his teeth and let his eyes dart from one corner to another. It wasn't that bad, really. It looked like some kind of fog. Nothing dangerous, really, or so he would have said if he'd been looking at it on his own. The bastard was Security, though, and of all the faults Crow could attribute to Security, he couldn't say they were cowards. He was stuck here until it cleared, then. Okay. No problem. He'd live. Two people in a room this size should be fine for a couple of days, easy.

A couple of days.

A couple of days in a room even smaller than a prison cell. Even smaller than _solitary_. With no way to get out. Not even a window like the ones in stir he could stick his hands through, if he needed to. And what was keeping him here? Some kind of stupid black fog and the whim of a Security asshole.

Crow turned around and scrabbled at the door, trying to find the bolt the demented little clown had locked. Fuck his pride; he needed out of here. _Now._ Something caught at his pocket. He jerked his hip away and returned his attention to the doorframe. He found the bolt at last and drew it, then yanked on the handle. It stuck. The coat. Right. Just one more step to get out. Right – damn it . . .

Crow was in the process of bending over to yank the bastard's coat out of the door when something clicked on his wrist. He tried to turn and found his progress stopped by his arm being yanked from the other direction, and then both his hands were behind his back.

_oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit - _

_Click._

Crow swung around and kicked. The fucker actually managed to dodge him. Crow had to give him credit, in spite of his rage at being first blindsided and then restrained with his own fucking handcuffs.

"I told you not to do that."

Crow tried to keep his breath at least marginally even. "I want out of here, damn it."

He fully expected to be ignored by the other, and he wasn't disappointed. The only answer he got was an infuriating "mm," followed by the appearance of a holophone in the clown's hand. The cuffs bit into Crow's skin, their edges worn slightly from being hooked to hundreds of duel disks and used for all kinds of things they'd never been intended for (including, once upon a time, as a rope to get into Security). He could feel his breathing getting faster, heavier, and tried to force himself to stop. Hyperventilating only used more air, he knew that from Yuusei, or maybe it was Kiryu -

Crow was jolted, however briefly, out of his panic when the little bastard slammed his holophone against his leg. He looked highly displeased and his voice, when he spoke, was distinctly annoyed.

"Reception to the city is out."

" . . . that's impossible," Crow protested. "Reception to the city for holophones is on continuous band. It's got to be, or we couldn't of – "

"I'm sure even a street rat like you can appreciate the meaning of 'no service,'" the tiny man said, doing Crow the extreme (if unwitting) favour of not letting him finish a sentence that would likely have landed him and Yuusei both in Security for hacking and marker-jamming. "You're correct in that the reception is supposed to be continuous band. Nevertheless, I'm unable to get a signal."

Crow felt his eyes drawn yet again to the corners. He took a deep breath and climbed back on the desk – an interesting proposition in handcuffs – and peered out again, hungry for more space and a sightline that didn't end five feet away. The outside, black though it was, was close enough to touch . . . or would have been, if he'd had a way to shatter inch-thick bulletproof glass.

"It should be cleared by morning, if not sooner," the clown said from behind him. "But I must say I pity those who chose to sleep in the streets tonight."

Crow turned, panic beginning not just to nibble but to bite. "What do you know about it?"

Somehow, he wasn't very surprised when the pen-computer appeared again and the freakish little Security drone pulled up a record that had absolutely nothing to do with what he'd just asked, seating himself casually in the chair near the door. Selective hearing, the weapon of choice among dictatorships everywhere. Crow was left to stare around the office again. By morning. Right. Okay. Crow was used to rolling out early because of his kids, and he imagined city people did, too – they had real jobs, after all, and places to go and things to look at. So call it seven in the morning. Less than a day. Less than sixteen hours, even. No problem. He forced himself to take a breath, a deep one, and then another. He sat down on the desk and steadied the lantern with his elbow before it could fall over. He had been first lasered, then tasered, then turned loose in gen-pop with his hands cuffed while the guards laughed the day he'd gotten his third marker, and he'd never shed a tear. He was not going to go to pieces in front of some high-up Security bastard just because he was locked in a tiny room with no way out and no open windows. He was _not_.

He could handle sixteen hours. He'd gone up to twelve in a cell before, after all, and he'd stayed mostly calm. The guards were usually okay with letting him out to chill in the corridor for five minutes if he really couldn't take it anymore – an irate prisoner was a matter very different from a panicked one when it came to keeping order – but on one particular day there'd been some kind of surprise inspection and in his cell he'd had to remain until the high-ups were gone, and he'd been just fine. Granted, the cell had been fully lighted, and he'd known he'd get out eventually if he was just patient, and the cells in the new facility all had barred glassless windows opening into the central area that were sufficient to keep away the horrible airless feeling overtaking him now, but –

He wasn't entirely sure when he started screaming, but he knew when he stopped; tiny demented clown or not, the Security lapdog in front of him certainly knew how to hit. Crow stared at him in shock.

"I thought rats liked cosy nesting spaces."

"Fuck you," Crow said, abandoning any tenuous pretense at civility. It occurred to him that he couldn't remember having ever been slapped, not once in his life. He'd had his ear pulled by Martha plenty of times, and he'd gotten into more than his fair share of street-scraps and prison fights, but really, actually slapped – no. The little asshole made a sound that reminded Crow of a sneezing cat.

"You should be more grateful."

"I'll be grateful when I'm out of here." Crow shifted his hands restlessly. The cuffs were still biting into his wrists. The feeling reminded him of when, as a kid, he had been given dish duty as punishment (again) and had sat there scrubbing plates and listening to the eternal, monotonous drip of the faucet while the other kids first hurried through their own chores and then went outside to play. The dishes had been bad; the drip had been absolutely maddening, like the steel rims digging into his wrists while he sat in a dark, tiny room. Crow took a deep, uneven breath – there was air here, he could breathe – and closed his eyes. It didn't really help, and after a few seconds he couldn't help opening them again and staring into the shadows in the corners.

"Hnph." The tiny bastard went back to his holo-screen. Crow went through his mental list of options, trying to keep them at least mostly straight. There weren't many, and most of them were just some version of freaking out again. He wished bitterly that Yuusei were with him; of all the friends and acquaintances Crow had ever had, Yuusei was the one who would have been able to readily give him half a dozen perfectly good reasons why he shouldn't panic, and maybe even find a way to get him to –

"Let me out of these."

Nothing. Crow tried to keep from losing his temper or his patience and failed at both. He thumped his heels loudly against the desk.

"Hey. You. I said let me out."

And more of the same. If there was one thing Crow hated more than tiny spaces, it was being ignored. He almost wished he had shoes instead of boots; he could have flipped one off. Fifty points if he hit the jackass in the head. He would have been willing to bet he could do it, too.

"Hey, bastard, I'm talking to you!"

"Such a shame not all the rats were exterminated," the little freak said, and Crow felt something very cold slip into his stomach. Exterminated . . . killed? Was that what this deformed Security asshole meant? When the cloud settled, would he be walking out into a ghost town?

No. This was all an attempt at freaking him out, Crow was sure. A distressingly _successful_ attempt. He took a deep breath and squeezed his fingers into a fist. If he concentrated very hard, he could imagine the hand touching it was Yuusei's, and the thought of Yuusei and his reasons – even if Crow wasn't entirely sure what those reasons would be anymore – calmed him. He wasn't going to be very impressive having hysterics like a girl; he was Crow the Bullet, damn it. And he still needed to haul home some Dark Signer ass. Fine. He could play nice. He didn't have to _like_ it, but at least it would – should – hopefully – get him what he wanted.

"Jaeger."

Still nothing. Crow wondered how pretty the fucking clown's face would be if he had a shiner to cover with his fancy makeup. Then he took another deep breath and imagined Yuusei telling him why hauling off and kicking the Security jackass in the jaw would be a very, very bad idea. It helped, usually. Crow clenched his teeth. The imaginary Yuusei's hand squeezed his shoulder. Crow closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

"Jaeger-_san_."

"Mm?"

The condescending expression on the bastard's face pissed Crow off all over again, but he held onto his temper. Exploding in here would do him no good, and might get him hurt. He forced himself to stay calm. Chatting with the guards – something he was in the habit of doing fairly often, actually – was quite different from asking something of an ass like this.

"Will you take these things off?" He hated having to give some stupid formula like a disobedient child – he was eighteen, after all, not six – but he supposed it couldn't hurt and saying it up front might at least pull one of the Security clown's arguments out from beneath him. "I won't go after the window. I just want to sleep."

If the little psycho laughed that way one more time, Crow thought, he was going to go fucking crazy. He sat and waited, his imaginary Yuusei reminding him quietly that patience would get him a lot further than flying off the handle.

"And why should I trust a rabid rat who takes pride in being named for a carrion-eater? Be glad I've only clipped your wings."

Crow bit his tongue before he could snap out something he knew he'd regret. More than ever he wished Yuusei were really here, not as a source of comfort anymore but as someone who could get between Crow and this power-grubbing pissant and talk some sanity into the situation.

"I just want to chill, okay? I can't even feel my fucking fingers." Which was not _entirely_ true – he was getting that horrible prickly feeling in a couple of them, but they weren't totally numb – but Crow had long since passed the end of his patience.

"Perhaps you ought to have considered that before you decided to make a half-baked attempt at causing your own premature demise." Crow watched the evil little clown cross his ankles in the opposite direction with something quickly approaching the beginnings of actual hate. "I see no reason to allow a wild animal the freedom to put both itself and others in the path of danger."

Crow clenched his teeth again against the stream of mixed obscenities and screaming that wanted to pour out of him like water from one of the old manufactory pipes still dotting one edge of Satellite. If the ass had been anyone else, Crow would have offered to barter with him – guards were often willing to accept cigarettes or rare cards, if he could keep them hidden during strip-search, in exchange for small freedoms – but this Security fucker didn't strike Crow as the type to exchange goods for service. He tried to pop the cuffs by turning his wrists. Nothing doing. He twisted to see what was on the desk behind him and let his heels bang against the cheap metal drawers. All he needed, really, was something to pop the clasp, something sturdy enough that he could simply press his hands back against it.

Two minutes with a pen holder convinced him he was going to have to try the jackass again. That damp, foggy feeling – the one so very like cold hands on his neck – was trying to block out the world again, and he suspected the next time he got the screaming meemies he'd get a tiny but well-placed boot to the back of the head instead of a slap across his face.

"Hey." Inspiration struck him, and he paused. "If you let me out I won't tell anyone you knew what happened out there." There was a catch to this promise, one he hoped the little psycho wouldn't pick up on. Quite simply, there was nobody he could tell who would believe him except Yuusei, and Yuusei was in no position to be fighting Security. It was a worthless threat. But the way the clown's eyes darted up over his holo-screen gave Crow the impression he'd definitely touched a nerve. _Good._

"You wouldn't be telling for long."

Crow resisted the urge to bang his heels against the drawer again in frustration. "Look, I just want to move my hands." He paused and took a deep breath. "Please." He could worry about how stupid that sounded, he decided, at some future point when he didn't feel like he was drowning.

There was a five-second pause about six hours long. Then the bastard stood up and headed – far too slowly, in Crow's opinion – for the desk. A pair of small hands traveled over Crow's wrists, and then the thumbs found the snap-springs Yuusei had used in place of a key. The pressure on Crow's wrists disappeared, and he rubbed his wrists to rid them of the lingering memory-touch of steel, cold even through his gloves. He glared at the asshole's back, wondering if it would be worth it to pounce while the jackass had his back turned and really shake his dice. Then he thought of the look on Yuusei's face if he ever found out Crow had gotten pissed and jumped someone smaller than himself from behind. The satisfaction he would gain now, Crow decided, would not be worth that look later.

Crow looked around the office for a convenient surface to lie down on. He had two options – the desk and the floor – neither of which really appealed to him, but as he'd heard many times beggars couldn't be choosers, and as long as he wasn't getting bitten by who knew what he'd be happy. And so he cleared what he could off the desk – the pen-stand seemed to be permanent, but the desk was big enough for him to curl up without being bothered by it – and rolled up his vest to put between his head and his arm. Panic tried to set in as soon as he closed his eyes, and so he called up his mental Yuusei - _it's only a room, Crow, it survived a massive earthquake and seventeen years of abuse after and look, even the windows are still here, you're fine, it's not going to fall in on you_ - and forced himself to relax. Eventually he was able to slow his own breath enough to sleep, no matter how lightly. Crow didn't care; at this point, he would accept any brand of unconsciousness.

Without his kids to wake him and with the effect of two sleepless nights on top of him, it didn't take long for Crow to fall into a far deeper doze than he'd intended. He dreamed of Yuusei and Kiryu, and of running, as he had since he was a small child – running and running until he flew right off the end of the Daedalus Bridge and set his sights on the farthest edge of the horizon. He dreamed of carrying Yuusei into Martha's, and transferring him into Dr. Schmitt's arms – of the way Yuusei had moaned when he was moved – _Yuusei_, who'd broken an arm when he was ten and never uttered a sound – and the sticky, slimy feeling against Crow's palms as Yuusei's blood had first covered and then soaked into his gloves, staining his hands a bright and hateful red, the sound of Kiryu's insane new laughter still echoing in his ears – and then someone grabbed his shoulder and he rolled over, knife already in hand and striking before he could even remember where he was and why he was sleeping in the middle of the day.

He recoiled at the same time as the little bastard, dropping his knife and raising his hands in horror. Of all the things Crow was afraid of – and there were many, far more than he would ever admit – becoming Kiryu was the worst.

Crow had started sleeping with a knife in his belt when he'd moved out on his own, his theory being that he had kids to protect (and himself, as well, because he couldn't very well take care of them if he was dead, could he); now he wished he hadn't. The Security jackass hadn't even been nicked, but that didn't matter. There weren't many ways someone could mistake a knife being drawn on them for anything but a serious threat. Crow wondered if he'd be given enough time before his execution to call Martha and ask her to send Yuusei to pick up his kids. He could have killed the little bastard – nobody knew he was here, and he knew perfectly well no information had been sent to Security base, not from inside B.A.D. – but bastard or not he was unarmed, and hadn't actually made any threats Crow considered a serious hazard to his physical health. Crow had done a lot of things he wasn't entirely proud of, but he hadn't yet sunk as low as killing a defenseless man in cold blood, and he had no intention of starting now if he could avoid it.

"Shit – I – I didn't – "

"I wasn't aware your record was incomplete. Perhaps it should be corrected."

"I – what – "

"Attempted murder ought not to be omitted."

"I didn't – I wasn't trying to murder anyone!" Crow looked down at the knife lying on the floor. "You gave me a hell of a jump, okay, but I wouldn't've – I mean – I didn't – "

"Someone's been lax." The tone was clipped. Crow pressed his hands to the sides of his head.

"Look, _I wouldn't do that,_ okay? I'm not stupid. Yuusei – he turned one of our friends in for killing somebody. He wouldn't care how much it hurt if he thought it was the right thing to do. I couldn't – I wouldn't make him do something like that again. It was bad enough the first time."

The little holo-computer appeared. Crow saw his own most recent booking photograph staring backward through the screen and ignored it in favour of wondering if he'd even get a trial. The little clown ran his finger down the screen. Crow didn't bother trying to read the information through it; he knew what it would say. He'd been seen fifty-odd times, arrested fourteen; he was a habitual thief; he had once escaped a facility that was later shut down because he'd proven just how easy it was to get out. It was his second big arrest, the one that landed him with the dot, and the joke of the whole thing was that he hadn't been the jailbreaker at all. He'd been sitting by the window, staring out the window at the sea and the stars that actually showed above it on that side of Satellite, and then a set of fingers had slipped between the bars and touched his hand.

Three minutes with a screwdriver had seen Yuusei reaching through the window to give Crow a leg out. He'd loaded Crow onto the front of his half-finished D-wheel and they'd ridden like half the residents of Hell were after them while Crow told Yuusei how absolutely, totally, completely fucking insane he was, risking a marker of his own for something like that. Yuusei had just _grinned_ at him, an expression so high on the mischief scale Crow had been half-sure Yuusei'd gone mad. They'd hidden beneath an old dock and watched the world fade from silver to blue as the hot summer moon went down, and then turn to blazing pink and gold as the sun came up. Then they'd parted ways and Crow had snuck into B.A.D., now a fugitive in every sense of the word. That was information the Security database would not have; the really important things in life never made it into a criminal profile.

"Mm. I see there are multiple ways in which this isn't up to date. Perhaps someone at headquarters needs to be reminded they're paid for a reason."

Crow blinked. That was . . . unexpected, to say the least. "Huh?"

The smile he received in return was both infuriating and terrifying.

"Apparently Security hasn't yet been made aware of the exact nature of your relationship with . . . mm . . . Yuusei-kun."

Crow nearly started right off the desk. He almost asked if mind-reading was one of the tricks people had to learn in circus school, but for once in his life he realized just how stupid it would be to say such a thing _before_ he said it. "I don't know what you mean."

"No? I'm surprised," the little bastard said. Crow recognized the look in his eyes and hated it. It was not _quite_ the appraising glance of someone wondering just how hard their pretty new cellmate could kick or bite, but it was close enough to make Crow uneasy. "Perhaps you were thinking of a Yuusei I've not yet met, then."

Crow stared at him. Then he understood, and came very close to letting fly again. Jack had said once that Crow never shut up, even when he was sleeping. Now he'd probably landed his own stupid ass in water hot to the boiling point, and he hadn't even had to be awake to do it. "Leave Yuusei out of this."

The Security ass examined Crow's record idly for several seconds more. "If you weren't both persons of extreme interest to Security, that could be arranged," he said, and Crow bit the insides of his mouth very hard to keep from screaming. "But as things stand, I'm afraid that's quite impossible. Unless, of course . . . "

"Unless _what?_" Crow kept his place on the desk only with serious difficulty. He was already a dead bird flying, so to speak; he couldn't do much damage to himself anymore by shaking the pissant right out of his fancy little boots. He watched as the holo-screen disappeared.

"Little though I relish the thought, I must confess there may be a better place for you than an execution cell," the clown said. "The Director can always use another ally in this particular battle, even one from such a . . . dubious background."

Crow met the little bastard's gaze and held it. "Like _hell_ I'm going to work for Security. I'd never do something like that."

"Mm." The holo-screen appeared again. Crow recognized the booking shot on the other side – this one of someone who had no marker, condemned men didn't need them – and nearly screamed. Tricks like that ought to be illegal. "I'd advise you to consider it carefully before you make up your mind, rat. Communications are clearing on this side of the channel, and cells on man's last mile are very small indeed."

Crow felt his eyes being drawn to the corners of the room in spite of himself. "I'm not stupid," he said at last. "I'm Satellite-born and I have a rap sheet longer than you are tall. I couldn't work for Security even if I wanted to."

"Fudou-san is Satellite-born," the jackass said. Crow resisted the urge to correct him – Yuusei was a Satellite by virtue of relocation, not birth, he knew that as well as he knew everything worth knowing about Yuusei. "This is a rather . . . unconventional employment. The Director chooses those he thinks best for this particular team without regard to birthplace or criminal record – of which Fudou-san is also possessed, I might add."

Crow thought of how different Yuusei's let-the-devil-give-a-damn grin looked with a marker on one side of his face and wanted to scream for reasons completely unrelated to the too-close walls around him. "He's not working for you because he wants to. You bastards tricked him into it." _And gave him the worst scar in the universe as a reward,_ Crow added in his head.

"On the contrary, he made the choice of his own free will," the little asshole said. "It was his own decision to take on the burden of his friends, as well."

"I've got kids," Crow said. He paused as that sentence sunk in, and then a cold knife slid into his chest and down to his stomach as he realized he might _not_ have kids, not anymore, not if the fog this bastard was so afraid of had gotten as far as the little dock Crow called home. He tried to shove away the mental images of his kids crying and hiding in his room, of Mia's limp little body cradled loosely in Jace's lifeless arms, of tear-tracks drying on Daichi's slowly blackening face while he waited for a niichan who would never wipe them away. It was stupid – he knew that – they'd be fine – but even telling himself so was a lot harder than he would have liked it to be. He took a deep breath. "Six of them. I can't just leave them here while I run off to the city. And I know how this shit works. They stay here while you get me away from them, and then I find out they've went missing and I better not fuck up if I want them to stay alive. Right?" They'd be locked in a room very like the one he was in now – small and dirty and dark – and their caretakers would be guards with no interest in playing pretend or holding them when the thunder got too loud for little ones' comfort. Absolutely not. Crow wouldn't allow it. _Couldn't._

"If the threat the Director is trying to avert grows unchecked, their safety will be completely out of the question, no matter their location," the demented clown said. "In any case, we'd have no reason to make them 'go missing,' as you choose to put it. The Public Maintenance Bureau has no need to stoop to such clumsy attempts at keeping their employees loyal. The Director is a reasonable man, and I have little doubt any compensation you received for your cooperation would be more than enough to provide for them, if that's your desire."

Crow ran through a mental checklist that had grown so automatic even unbelievable amounts of fear and anger couldn't obliterate it. Shoes for Seven; pants, or at least a longer skirt, for Sumi; coats for all of them, for the cold weather; medicine for Daichi, who was always down with _something_; the eternal need for food – and the little things, things most Satellites would probably consider superfluous, like drawing paper and crayons and dolls and a ball or two, things that made kids _kids_ instead of haunted little adult-ghosts.

Except.

"If I survived, right? I saw what happened to Yuusei. Those fuckers are totally lethal." Not that Crow minded dying for his kids – he'd told Yuusei as much, and he'd meant it – but he was damned if he was going to let them be used as bargaining chips.

"Those would be matters more properly discussed with the Director," the pissant said. "I'm well aware he and Fudou-san have had such a discussion already."

"I can take care of my kids without Security money," Crow spat back at him. "I've been doing it for five years." He'd still practically been a kid himself when he'd found the first of his pack – now a teenager himself and collecting kids of his own – offering things no child should have to offer in exchange for food. Crow hadn't always been able to provide more than some bread and a roof, and he'd gone hungry more than a few times to fill his kids' bellies, but he'd managed. And now he was doing it with only minimal help from Martha and no help at all from Yuusei or Kiryu or Jack, and as far as he knew none of his kids had ever missed a meal. Crow's pride could survive a trip to the red-light district to get the money for antibiotics; he wasn't sure it would survive a Security pay cheque.

"Perhaps so," the jackass answered, and Crow took a deep breath to calm himself just in case the damned clown decided to call his kids ratlings. He'd made his own choices; his kids' only crime was being born. "But I imagine even the most adaptable gutter rat would have difficulty caring for its young from an execution holding-cell."

The thought made Crow colder than he would ever have admitted aloud. "Fuck you."

The little bastard let out a mocking sigh. "Perhaps it's just as well. We wouldn't want Yuusei-kun concerned about the status of yet another of his friends, would we? It's far too easy for worry to distract a man in the heat of battle."

Crow knew the statement for what it was – just another attempt at keeping him off-balance and getting under his skin, now he had something the little bastard wanted – but knowing didn't keep Crow from remembering the horrible ashy colour of Yuusei's skin after his battle with Kiryu, or the memory of the dark thoughts that had kept Crow preoccupied while he waited to find out if his oldest friend, the one Crow valued more than life, was going to live or die. If Crow hadn't been watching that duel, Yuusei might still be laying where he'd fallen, calling by now for help that would never come. Somebody, as Crow had told Jack more than once, had to look out for Yuusei or one of these days he'd kill himself playing hero.

"I'm not a Signer." He'd wondered briefly if he might be – if Yuusei and Jack were, after all, why not him? – but he'd seen Yuusei's and Jack's arms both glowing during Yuusei's duel, and his own had remained blank and unmarked. "I didn't know Security was paying for bait now."

"Fudou-san clearly considers you to be of some kind of importance, or he wouldn't have shared so much information with you. But since you seem to have made your decision already, I'll have Security here directly – "

"You still haven't told me why I'm so important you're willing to pay me instead of killing me," Crow interrupted, before the bastard could pull out his holophone. "You want to screw me into it the way you did Yuusei, I think I at least deserve to know that." He glanced up at the window. There was light outside now, the kind of thin gray dawnlight he woke up to almost every morning. He fought down the anxiety that was trying to build again, now he wasn't distracted by being pissed as hell. It couldn't take that much longer to clear enough to leave. He'd be walking out of this room after all, if he was only patient. He took a deep breath and imagined Yuusei's hand over his own again. He'd slept through the worst of it; he'd be fine, if he could hang on to his head long enough to get through this.

"On the contrary, as I've just said, Fudou-san considers you a valuable ally. And though I'd hardly consider thieving an asset, I'm certain the Director could find a use for someone used to making fast escapes."

"And why should I be doing you favours again?" Crow found his gaze drawn again to the window and the promise of freedom beyond. The gray was thinner than ever, slowly fading back to the flat white glare of sun on concrete. Crow resisted the urge to make a run for the door; he suspected the little ass was serious about calling Security.

This time he wasn't even granted a response. Crow supposed he didn't really need one. He wasn't stupid enough to believe he'd get off this time. And he had people to protect. His kids, Martha, Martha's kids . . . and Yuusei, whether Yuusei believed he needed protecting or not. Crow let his eyes drop to his hands to give himself time to think – or at least, to resign himself to the inevitable. Execution . . . or working for a group he despised. Leaving his kids alone . . . or accepting what he couldn't stop thinking of as blood money. Crow had made a lot of decisions he didn't like making when it came to his kids, but this one – in part because it was so inevitable – he absolutely _hated_. He pulled himself up onto the desk again. He could see the flat black of an abandoned parking lot beyond the window. Beyond that was more commercial space; beyond that, the industrial strip, and in that strip, Crow's home. The ground was clear.

"I have to check on my kids before I even think about going anywhere."

"You'll be checking on no one," the little bastard answered. "You have somewhere to go, rat. Your charges can wait an hour."

Crow sighed and turned his back on the window. "Look. You want me to go with you and talk to Godwin? Fine. I'll go with you. I guess I don't have much of a choice. But I have six kids who're probably scared as fuck right now – " _scared, please, just scared, not dead or gone, please, whoever's out there listening, _ please - "and I need to make sure they're okay and take them to Martha's so they're not alone for days at a time while I'm off dueling or fighting Godzilla or whatever the hell it is Godwin's little group is doing. Mia's only four. Maybe people in the city do things different than we do here, but the way I was raised is no decent parent would leave a four-year-old alone with a nine-year-old for a babysitter for more than a couple of hours, okay? If you want me that bad, you're going to have to deal with me having kids that need to be took care of. I can't leave them alone that way."

"I think you forget your place, rat." The pissant looked vaguely annoyed. Crow shrugged.

"I'm asking for forty minutes to make sure my kids are safe. You think that's so much to ask?" He paused just long enough for the answer to occur to him. "Yeah, you probably do. You don't mind using them to get what you want, but you'd probably be happy if I got back from the Cracks of Doom or where-the-hell-ever and found out you had six less Satellites to worry about. Doesn't matter to you if I'm trying to raise my kids decent. You may not give a shit, but I do, and I want to see my kids. I think you can live for half an hour."

"You expect me to trust your word that you'll return to Security if I let you go? You must be mad." There was ire in the clown's voice, but that was all. Crow actually found himself wondering if maybe the bastard had kids of his own. He did his best to hold on to his own temper; the jackass would have been perfectly within his rights as a member of Security to permanently solve the Crow problem in Satellite, and he'd chosen not to. Maybe, Crow thought, Yuusei was onto something with his idea that all true duelists had a concept of honour. Crow shrugged.

"I can't tell you to believe me. All I can tell you is I can't leave my kids that way. And you can't send Security to pick them up. They hide from strangers."

The ass gave him a look Crow recognized from Yuusei. "An hour either way will make no difference to the welfare of your . . . charges."

In spite of his worry, Crow had to hide a grin. He would have loved it if his kids were really _his_, but it was fun to watch Security try to figure out what to call them when most of them were quite clearly too old to be his by blood. "So you expect me to go to the city, leave my kids here, talk to Godwin, and then . . . what? I get to come back here and take care of them? Why would he trust me any more than you do?"

"One assumes even a Satellite rat such as yourself has a concept of what a contracted occupation is," the little clown said. He looked closely at the window over the desk, then pulled his coat from under the door. "If you have any sense of what's good for you, you'll do as you're told while in the Director's pay."

Crow grabbed his cuffs from the pissant's chair and jammed them back into his pocket, then reached for the doorknob. The door swung open. Crow forced himself to wait for the other to walk through before following. The ass nodded toward the door. It was the first time he could ever remember following a member of Security while not cuffed or drugged and of his own free (if grudging) will, all too aware that he was in the process of doing something he'd sworn he'd never do, never, for anything.

And as they stepped out of the warehouse into a Satellite both changed and still, Crow was sure he could hear someone laughing.

**Title**: Cages or Wings?  
**Author**: Nina/**technicolornina**  
**Fandom**: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds  
**Pairing/Characters**: Jaeger, Crow, lots of offscreen Yuusei, implied **onesided tagshipping.**  
**Word Count**: 7 566  
**Spoilers:** A/U beginning halfway through episode 44.  
**Story Rating**: **R/M** for **Crow's mouth**.  
**Story Summary**: What would have happened if Jaeger had run the other way? Now with claustrophobic Crow, serious crushing, lots of cuss words, and more!  
**Notes**: A HUGE SHOUT OUT to my wonderful, amazing, FANTASTIC beta **emeralddarkness**. And also to the lovely **7th_rock_alien** for her feedback and amusing comments on Crow and Dark Signer ass.  
**Warnings**: Crow swears. A lot. Even more than he does in canon.  
**Feedback**: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)  
**Special Thanks/Dedications**: This story is for the lovely **sepsku**.

_Cages or wings?  
Which do you prefer?  
Ask the birds  
Fear or love, baby?  
Don't say the answer  
Actions speak louder than words_

What does it take  
To wake up a generation?  
How can you make someone  
Take off and fly?  
If we don't wake up  
And shake up the nation  
We'll eat the dust of the world  
Wondering why

~ "Louder Than Words," Tick, Tick . . . BOOM

Crow had heard before that "never" was the word God (or the gods, or some god, anyway) listened for when he (or they, or it) was looking for a laugh, but he'd never really understood it until the day the world went dark.

It was a simple enough matter to start with – he'd been chasing Kiryu (and any other Dark Signers he might possibly find), ready to drag home a couple of evil bodies for Yuusei like a kitten with its first prey – and instead of a Dark Signer, he'd run into the demented little clown who ran some branch of Security that Crow had, to date, miracle of miracles, not yet fallen afoul of. And so, of course, he challenged the little bastard to a duel. Which he'd been two turns away from winning when the ground started to shake, damn it all.

"An earthquake?" Crow looked down at the floor, concerned. Some part of him was incredibly afraid of earthquakes – a fear shared by everyone in Satellite old enough to remember – or to have some vague blur of what _might_ be a memory, in Crow's case – what had happened seventeen years ago. His minor disquiet was not in the least alleviated by the jackass across from him starting to panic.

"Has it started already?!"

Crow was about to ask what the fuck that was supposed to mean when the grimy warehouse window lit up a brilliant purple. "What the – what's going on?"

"This is terrible!" The clown yanked his deck out of his duel disk "I hadn't thought it'd start this quickly!" He turned and started back the way he'd come, paused, turned the other way, and darted further into the shadows of the warehouse. Crow followed him, unsnapping and reeling in his cuffs automatically as he went. He was good at it; he didn't even have to pause to jam them into his pocket.

"Hey! You can't just run off in the middle of a duel that way, you – "

Ahead of him was a door, standing half-open. Crow slipped through it just before the evil little bastard had the chance to slam it shut. The tiny asshole leaned against it to push it fully shut as quickly as possible, puffing in a manner in a manner Crow probably would have found funny as hell if he hadn't been too busy taking in the size of the room around him.

" . . . _shit_." The pissant could forfeit if he wanted; Crow just wanted out. .He turned around to haul ass back out the door and froze in shock. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

It was obvious – the Security bastard had taken off his coat and was stuffing it into and against the crack under the door - but combined with a room that could not possibly be more than eight steps from side to side, the sight was anything but comforting. Crow watched in disbelief as the jackass finished jamming the coat under the door, then breathed an obvious sigh of relief, stepped back and smoothed the sleeves of his blouse automatically. Crow really wished he hadn't. He was having a hard enough time keeping panic at bay, and the sight of the stopped-up crack only made him feel even less like he could still breathe.

"You. I want out of here."

The other smirked, an expression that kind of made Crow want to throw the tiny idiot against the nearest wall. "I wouldn't, if I were you." He pointed to the window – the miraculously intact window – over the old desk. Crow, not one to stand on ceremony at the best of times, pulled himself onto the desk and stood on it to look out.

The world beyond was black.

"What the fuck?" Crow scrambled off the desk and peered out the other miraculously-intact window in the door. The warehouse through which they had just run had disappeared; it was darker than midnight in solitary during a new moon. Crow decided not to waste time on the rusty-looking bolt – those stupid things could stick like a bitch – and pounded one fist against the glass. It held. He slammed his fist against it again, the tiny rodent-teeth of panic starting to eat at the edges of his consciousness. The glass didn't even quiver. He yanked off his bandanna to wrap around his hand to try again, and then a hand much smaller than even his was pulling his arm away from the window. In spite of his need to get away, to get out, to get _air_, Crow couldn't help wondering how the tiny freak could possibly have the strength to pull his arm from that angle.

"Do you want to get us both killed?" The voice was a hiss; there wasn't even a pretense of goodwill in it anymore. Crow was reminded, in a vague and half-panic-stricken way, of the day he'd met Daichi, when Daichi had still been a nameless little boy crying in the back of a ruined game shop, cowering and pointing at a small but dangerous-looking snake crawling amid crumbled green tiles. Crow knew how he'd felt.

Even the murky light from the window was gone. Crow wasn't sure it could get much worse. At least he couldn't see the walls anymore, and that was –

He heard the slide of a drawer, the snap of plastic, and then there was a battery-operated lantern sitting on the desk. In its light the room seemed smaller than ever. Crow couldn't help moaning aloud.

"What _is_ that shit?"

"Highly unpleasant," the little – no, the fucking _midget_, Crow was short enough to know abnormally small when he saw it – answered. "And since I, at least, value my life enough that I wish to still be in possession of it ten minutes from now, we'll remain here for the time being." He turned, sat, pulled out his computer, and uploaded a file. Crow clenched his teeth and let his eyes dart from one corner to another. It wasn't that bad, really. It looked like some kind of fog. Nothing dangerous, really, or so he would have said if he'd been looking at it on his own. The bastard was Security, though, and of all the faults Crow could attribute to Security, he couldn't say they were cowards. He was stuck here until it cleared, then. Okay. No problem. He'd live. Two people in a room this size should be fine for a couple of days, easy.

A couple of days.

A couple of days in a room even smaller than a prison cell. Even smaller than _solitary_. With no way to get out. Not even a window like the ones in stir he could stick his hands through, if he needed to. And what was keeping him here? Some kind of stupid black fog and the whim of a Security asshole.

Crow turned around and scrabbled at the door, trying to find the bolt the demented little clown had locked. Fuck his pride; he needed out of here. _Now._ Something caught at his pocket. He jerked his hip away and returned his attention to the doorframe. He found the bolt at last and drew it, then yanked on the handle. It stuck. The coat. Right. Just one more step to get out. Right – damn it . . .

Crow was in the process of bending over to yank the bastard's coat out of the door when something clicked on his wrist. He tried to turn and found his progress stopped by his arm being yanked from the other direction, and then both his hands were behind his back.

_oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit - _

_Click._

Crow swung around and kicked. The fucker actually managed to dodge him. Crow had to give him credit, in spite of his rage at being first blindsided and then restrained with his own fucking handcuffs.

"I told you not to do that."

Crow tried to keep his breath at least marginally even. "I want out of here, damn it."

He fully expected to be ignored by the other, and he wasn't disappointed. The only answer he got was an infuriating "mm," followed by the appearance of a holophone in the clown's hand. The cuffs bit into Crow's skin, their edges worn slightly from being hooked to hundreds of duel disks and used for all kinds of things they'd never been intended for (including, once upon a time, as a rope to get into Security). He could feel his breathing getting faster, heavier, and tried to force himself to stop. Hyperventilating only used more air, he knew that from Yuusei, or maybe it was Kiryu -

Crow was jolted, however briefly, out of his panic when the little bastard slammed his holophone against his leg. He looked highly displeased and his voice, when he spoke, was distinctly annoyed.

"Reception to the city is out."

" . . . that's impossible," Crow protested. "Reception to the city for holophones is on continuous band. It's got to be, or we couldn't of – "

"I'm sure even a street rat like you can appreciate the meaning of 'no service,'" the tiny man said, doing Crow the extreme (if unwitting) favour of not letting him finish a sentence that would likely have landed him and Yuusei both in Security for hacking and marker-jamming. "You're correct in that the reception is supposed to be continuous band. Nevertheless, I'm unable to get a signal."

Crow felt his eyes drawn yet again to the corners. He took a deep breath and climbed back on the desk – an interesting proposition in handcuffs – and peered out again, hungry for more space and a sightline that didn't end five feet away. The outside, black though it was, was close enough to touch . . . or would have been, if he'd had a way to shatter inch-thick bulletproof glass.

"It should be cleared by morning, if not sooner," the clown said from behind him. "But I must say I pity those who chose to sleep in the streets tonight."

Crow turned, panic beginning not just to nibble but to bite. "What do you know about it?"

Somehow, he wasn't very surprised when the pen-computer appeared again and the freakish little Security drone pulled up a record that had absolutely nothing to do with what he'd just asked, seating himself casually in the chair near the door. Selective hearing, the weapon of choice among dictatorships everywhere. Crow was left to stare around the office again. By morning. Right. Okay. Crow was used to rolling out early because of his kids, and he imagined city people did, too – they had real jobs, after all, and places to go and things to look at. So call it seven in the morning. Less than a day. Less than sixteen hours, even. No problem. He forced himself to take a breath, a deep one, and then another. He sat down on the desk and steadied the lantern with his elbow before it could fall over. He had been first lasered, then tasered, then turned loose in gen-pop with his hands cuffed while the guards laughed the day he'd gotten his third marker, and he'd never shed a tear. He was not going to go to pieces in front of some high-up Security bastard just because he was locked in a tiny room with no way out and no open windows. He was _not_.

He could handle sixteen hours. He'd gone up to twelve in a cell before, after all, and he'd stayed mostly calm. The guards were usually okay with letting him out to chill in the corridor for five minutes if he really couldn't take it anymore – an irate prisoner was a matter very different from a panicked one when it came to keeping order – but on one particular day there'd been some kind of surprise inspection and in his cell he'd had to remain until the high-ups were gone, and he'd been just fine. Granted, the cell had been fully lighted, and he'd known he'd get out eventually if he was just patient, and the cells in the new facility all had barred glassless windows opening into the central area that were sufficient to keep away the horrible airless feeling overtaking him now, but –

He wasn't entirely sure when he started screaming, but he knew when he stopped; tiny demented clown or not, the Security lapdog in front of him certainly knew how to hit. Crow stared at him in shock.

"I thought rats liked cosy nesting spaces."

"Fuck you," Crow said, abandoning any tenuous pretense at civility. It occurred to him that he couldn't remember having ever been slapped, not once in his life. He'd had his ear pulled by Martha plenty of times, and he'd gotten into more than his fair share of street-scraps and prison fights, but really, actually slapped – no. The little asshole made a sound that reminded Crow of a sneezing cat.

"You should be more grateful."

"I'll be grateful when I'm out of here." Crow shifted his hands restlessly. The cuffs were still biting into his wrists. The feeling reminded him of when, as a kid, he had been given dish duty as punishment (again) and had sat there scrubbing plates and listening to the eternal, monotonous drip of the faucet while the other kids first hurried through their own chores and then went outside to play. The dishes had been bad; the drip had been absolutely maddening, like the steel rims digging into his wrists while he sat in a dark, tiny room. Crow took a deep, uneven breath – there was air here, he could breathe – and closed his eyes. It didn't really help, and after a few seconds he couldn't help opening them again and staring into the shadows in the corners.

"Hnph." The tiny bastard went back to his holo-screen. Crow went through his mental list of options, trying to keep them at least mostly straight. There weren't many, and most of them were just some version of freaking out again. He wished bitterly that Yuusei were with him; of all the friends and acquaintances Crow had ever had, Yuusei was the one who would have been able to readily give him half a dozen perfectly good reasons why he shouldn't panic, and maybe even find a way to get him to –

"Let me out of these."

Nothing. Crow tried to keep from losing his temper or his patience and failed at both. He thumped his heels loudly against the desk.

"Hey. You. I said let me out."

And more of the same. If there was one thing Crow hated more than tiny spaces, it was being ignored. He almost wished he had shoes instead of boots; he could have flipped one off. Fifty points if he hit the jackass in the head. He would have been willing to bet he could do it, too.

"Hey, bastard, I'm talking to you!"

"Such a shame not all the rats were exterminated," the little freak said, and Crow felt something very cold slip into his stomach. Exterminated . . . killed? Was that what this deformed Security asshole meant? When the cloud settled, would he be walking out into a ghost town?

No. This was all an attempt at freaking him out, Crow was sure. A distressingly _successful_ attempt. He took a deep breath and squeezed his fingers into a fist. If he concentrated very hard, he could imagine the hand touching it was Yuusei's, and the thought of Yuusei and his reasons – even if Crow wasn't entirely sure what those reasons would be anymore – calmed him. He wasn't going to be very impressive having hysterics like a girl; he was Crow the Bullet, damn it. And he still needed to haul home some Dark Signer ass. Fine. He could play nice. He didn't have to _like_ it, but at least it would – should – hopefully – get him what he wanted.

"Jaeger."

Still nothing. Crow wondered how pretty the fucking clown's face would be if he had a shiner to cover with his fancy makeup. Then he took another deep breath and imagined Yuusei telling him why hauling off and kicking the Security jackass in the jaw would be a very, very bad idea. It helped, usually. Crow clenched his teeth. The imaginary Yuusei's hand squeezed his shoulder. Crow closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

"Jaeger-_san_."

"Mm?"

The condescending expression on the bastard's face pissed Crow off all over again, but he held onto his temper. Exploding in here would do him no good, and might get him hurt. He forced himself to stay calm. Chatting with the guards – something he was in the habit of doing fairly often, actually – was quite different from asking something of an ass like this.

"Will you take these things off?" He hated having to give some stupid formula like a disobedient child – he was eighteen, after all, not six – but he supposed it couldn't hurt and saying it up front might at least pull one of the Security clown's arguments out from beneath him. "I won't go after the window. I just want to sleep."

If the little psycho laughed that way one more time, Crow thought, he was going to go fucking crazy. He sat and waited, his imaginary Yuusei reminding him quietly that patience would get him a lot further than flying off the handle.

"And why should I trust a rabid rat who takes pride in being named for a carrion-eater? Be glad I've only clipped your wings."

Crow bit his tongue before he could snap out something he knew he'd regret. More than ever he wished Yuusei were really here, not as a source of comfort anymore but as someone who could get between Crow and this power-grubbing pissant and talk some sanity into the situation.

"I just want to chill, okay? I can't even feel my fucking fingers." Which was not _entirely_ true – he was getting that horrible prickly feeling in a couple of them, but they weren't totally numb – but Crow had long since passed the end of his patience.

"Perhaps you ought to have considered that before you decided to make a half-baked attempt at causing your own premature demise." Crow watched the evil little clown cross his ankles in the opposite direction with something quickly approaching the beginnings of actual hate. "I see no reason to allow a wild animal the freedom to put both itself and others in the path of danger."

Crow clenched his teeth again against the stream of mixed obscenities and screaming that wanted to pour out of him like water from one of the old manufactory pipes still dotting one edge of Satellite. If the ass had been anyone else, Crow would have offered to barter with him – guards were often willing to accept cigarettes or rare cards, if he could keep them hidden during strip-search, in exchange for small freedoms – but this Security fucker didn't strike Crow as the type to exchange goods for service. He tried to pop the cuffs by turning his wrists. Nothing doing. He twisted to see what was on the desk behind him and let his heels bang against the cheap metal drawers. All he needed, really, was something to pop the clasp, something sturdy enough that he could simply press his hands back against it.

Two minutes with a pen holder convinced him he was going to have to try the jackass again. That damp, foggy feeling – the one so very like cold hands on his neck – was trying to block out the world again, and he suspected the next time he got the screaming meemies he'd get a tiny but well-placed boot to the back of the head instead of a slap across his face.

"Hey." Inspiration struck him, and he paused. "If you let me out I won't tell anyone you knew what happened out there." There was a catch to this promise, one he hoped the little psycho wouldn't pick up on. Quite simply, there was nobody he could tell who would believe him except Yuusei, and Yuusei was in no position to be fighting Security. It was a worthless threat. But the way the clown's eyes darted up over his holo-screen gave Crow the impression he'd definitely touched a nerve. _Good._

"You wouldn't be telling for long."

Crow resisted the urge to bang his heels against the drawer again in frustration. "Look, I just want to move my hands." He paused and took a deep breath. "Please." He could worry about how stupid that sounded, he decided, at some future point when he didn't feel like he was drowning.

There was a five-second pause about six hours long. Then the bastard stood up and headed – far too slowly, in Crow's opinion – for the desk. A pair of small hands traveled over Crow's wrists, and then the thumbs found the snap-springs Yuusei had used in place of a key. The pressure on Crow's wrists disappeared, and he rubbed his wrists to rid them of the lingering memory-touch of steel, cold even through his gloves. He glared at the asshole's back, wondering if it would be worth it to pounce while the jackass had his back turned and really shake his dice. Then he thought of the look on Yuusei's face if he ever found out Crow had gotten pissed and jumped someone smaller than himself from behind. The satisfaction he would gain now, Crow decided, would not be worth that look later.

Crow looked around the office for a convenient surface to lie down on. He had two options – the desk and the floor – neither of which really appealed to him, but as he'd heard many times beggars couldn't be choosers, and as long as he wasn't getting bitten by who knew what he'd be happy. And so he cleared what he could off the desk – the pen-stand seemed to be permanent, but the desk was big enough for him to curl up without being bothered by it – and rolled up his vest to put between his head and his arm. Panic tried to set in as soon as he closed his eyes, and so he called up his mental Yuusei - _it's only a room, Crow, it survived a massive earthquake and seventeen years of abuse after and look, even the windows are still here, you're fine, it's not going to fall in on you_ - and forced himself to relax. Eventually he was able to slow his own breath enough to sleep, no matter how lightly. Crow didn't care; at this point, he would accept any brand of unconsciousness.

Without his kids to wake him and with the effect of two sleepless nights on top of him, it didn't take long for Crow to fall into a far deeper doze than he'd intended. He dreamed of Yuusei and Kiryu, and of running, as he had since he was a small child – running and running until he flew right off the end of the Daedalus Bridge and set his sights on the farthest edge of the horizon. He dreamed of carrying Yuusei into Martha's, and transferring him into Dr. Schmitt's arms – of the way Yuusei had moaned when he was moved – _Yuusei_, who'd broken an arm when he was ten and never uttered a sound – and the sticky, slimy feeling against Crow's palms as Yuusei's blood had first covered and then soaked into his gloves, staining his hands a bright and hateful red, the sound of Kiryu's insane new laughter still echoing in his ears – and then someone grabbed his shoulder and he rolled over, knife already in hand and striking before he could even remember where he was and why he was sleeping in the middle of the day.

He recoiled at the same time as the little bastard, dropping his knife and raising his hands in horror. Of all the things Crow was afraid of – and there were many, far more than he would ever admit – becoming Kiryu was the worst.

Crow had started sleeping with a knife in his belt when he'd moved out on his own, his theory being that he had kids to protect (and himself, as well, because he couldn't very well take care of them if he was dead, could he); now he wished he hadn't. The Security jackass hadn't even been nicked, but that didn't matter. There weren't many ways someone could mistake a knife being drawn on them for anything but a serious threat. Crow wondered if he'd be given enough time before his execution to call Martha and ask her to send Yuusei to pick up his kids. He could have killed the little bastard – nobody knew he was here, and he knew perfectly well no information had been sent to Security base, not from inside B.A.D. – but bastard or not he was unarmed, and hadn't actually made any threats Crow considered a serious hazard to his physical health. Crow had done a lot of things he wasn't entirely proud of, but he hadn't yet sunk as low as killing a defenseless man in cold blood, and he had no intention of starting now if he could avoid it.

"Shit – I – I didn't – "

"I wasn't aware your record was incomplete. Perhaps it should be corrected."

"I – what – "

"Attempted murder ought not to be omitted."

"I didn't – I wasn't trying to murder anyone!" Crow looked down at the knife lying on the floor. "You gave me a hell of a jump, okay, but I wouldn't've – I mean – I didn't – "

"Someone's been lax." The tone was clipped. Crow pressed his hands to the sides of his head.

"Look, _I wouldn't do that,_ okay? I'm not stupid. Yuusei – he turned one of our friends in for killing somebody. He wouldn't care how much it hurt if he thought it was the right thing to do. I couldn't – I wouldn't make him do something like that again. It was bad enough the first time."

The little holo-computer appeared. Crow saw his own most recent booking photograph staring backward through the screen and ignored it in favour of wondering if he'd even get a trial. The little clown ran his finger down the screen. Crow didn't bother trying to read the information through it; he knew what it would say. He'd been seen fifty-odd times, arrested fourteen; he was a habitual thief; he had once escaped a facility that was later shut down because he'd proven just how easy it was to get out. It was his second big arrest, the one that landed him with the dot, and the joke of the whole thing was that he hadn't been the jailbreaker at all. He'd been sitting by the window, staring out the window at the sea and the stars that actually showed above it on that side of Satellite, and then a set of fingers had slipped between the bars and touched his hand.

Three minutes with a screwdriver had seen Yuusei reaching through the window to give Crow a leg out. He'd loaded Crow onto the front of his half-finished D-wheel and they'd ridden like half the residents of Hell were after them while Crow told Yuusei how absolutely, totally, completely fucking insane he was, risking a marker of his own for something like that. Yuusei had just _grinned_ at him, an expression so high on the mischief scale Crow had been half-sure Yuusei'd gone mad. They'd hidden beneath an old dock and watched the world fade from silver to blue as the hot summer moon went down, and then turn to blazing pink and gold as the sun came up. Then they'd parted ways and Crow had snuck into B.A.D., now a fugitive in every sense of the word. That was information the Security database would not have; the really important things in life never made it into a criminal profile.

"Mm. I see there are multiple ways in which this isn't up to date. Perhaps someone at headquarters needs to be reminded they're paid for a reason."

Crow blinked. That was . . . unexpected, to say the least. "Huh?"

The smile he received in return was both infuriating and terrifying.

"Apparently Security hasn't yet been made aware of the exact nature of your relationship with . . . mm . . . Yuusei-kun."

Crow nearly started right off the desk. He almost asked if mind-reading was one of the tricks people had to learn in circus school, but for once in his life he realized just how stupid it would be to say such a thing _before_ he said it. "I don't know what you mean."

"No? I'm surprised," the little bastard said. Crow recognized the look in his eyes and hated it. It was not _quite_ the appraising glance of someone wondering just how hard their pretty new cellmate could kick or bite, but it was close enough to make Crow uneasy. "Perhaps you were thinking of a Yuusei I've not yet met, then."

Crow stared at him. Then he understood, and came very close to letting fly again. Jack had said once that Crow never shut up, even when he was sleeping. Now he'd probably landed his own stupid ass in water hot to the boiling point, and he hadn't even had to be awake to do it. "Leave Yuusei out of this."

The Security ass examined Crow's record idly for several seconds more. "If you weren't both persons of extreme interest to Security, that could be arranged," he said, and Crow bit the insides of his mouth very hard to keep from screaming. "But as things stand, I'm afraid that's quite impossible. Unless, of course . . . "

"Unless _what?_" Crow kept his place on the desk only with serious difficulty. He was already a dead bird flying, so to speak; he couldn't do much damage to himself anymore by shaking the pissant right out of his fancy little boots. He watched as the holo-screen disappeared.

"Little though I relish the thought, I must confess there may be a better place for you than an execution cell," the clown said. "The Director can always use another ally in this particular battle, even one from such a . . . dubious background."

Crow met the little bastard's gaze and held it. "Like _hell_ I'm going to work for Security. I'd never do something like that."

"Mm." The holo-screen appeared again. Crow recognized the booking shot on the other side – this one of someone who had no marker, condemned men didn't need them – and nearly screamed. Tricks like that ought to be illegal. "I'd advise you to consider it carefully before you make up your mind, rat. Communications are clearing on this side of the channel, and cells on man's last mile are very small indeed."

Crow felt his eyes being drawn to the corners of the room in spite of himself. "I'm not stupid," he said at last. "I'm Satellite-born and I have a rap sheet longer than you are tall. I couldn't work for Security even if I wanted to."

"Fudou-san is Satellite-born," the jackass said. Crow resisted the urge to correct him – Yuusei was a Satellite by virtue of relocation, not birth, he knew that as well as he knew everything worth knowing about Yuusei. "This is a rather . . . unconventional employment. The Director chooses those he thinks best for this particular team without regard to birthplace or criminal record – of which Fudou-san is also possessed, I might add."

Crow thought of how different Yuusei's let-the-devil-give-a-damn grin looked with a marker on one side of his face and wanted to scream for reasons completely unrelated to the too-close walls around him. "He's not working for you because he wants to. You bastards tricked him into it." _And gave him the worst scar in the universe as a reward,_ Crow added in his head.

"On the contrary, he made the choice of his own free will," the little asshole said. "It was his own decision to take on the burden of his friends, as well."

"I've got kids," Crow said. He paused as that sentence sunk in, and then a cold knife slid into his chest and down to his stomach as he realized he might _not_ have kids, not anymore, not if the fog this bastard was so afraid of had gotten as far as the little dock Crow called home. He tried to shove away the mental images of his kids crying and hiding in his room, of Mia's limp little body cradled loosely in Jace's lifeless arms, of tear-tracks drying on Daichi's slowly blackening face while he waited for a niichan who would never wipe them away. It was stupid – he knew that – they'd be fine – but even telling himself so was a lot harder than he would have liked it to be. He took a deep breath. "Six of them. I can't just leave them here while I run off to the city. And I know how this shit works. They stay here while you get me away from them, and then I find out they've went missing and I better not fuck up if I want them to stay alive. Right?" They'd be locked in a room very like the one he was in now – small and dirty and dark – and their caretakers would be guards with no interest in playing pretend or holding them when the thunder got too loud for little ones' comfort. Absolutely not. Crow wouldn't allow it. _Couldn't._

"If the threat the Director is trying to avert grows unchecked, their safety will be completely out of the question, no matter their location," the demented clown said. "In any case, we'd have no reason to make them 'go missing,' as you choose to put it. The Public Maintenance Bureau has no need to stoop to such clumsy attempts at keeping their employees loyal. The Director is a reasonable man, and I have little doubt any compensation you received for your cooperation would be more than enough to provide for them, if that's your desire."

Crow ran through a mental checklist that had grown so automatic even unbelievable amounts of fear and anger couldn't obliterate it. Shoes for Seven; pants, or at least a longer skirt, for Sumi; coats for all of them, for the cold weather; medicine for Daichi, who was always down with _something_; the eternal need for food – and the little things, things most Satellites would probably consider superfluous, like drawing paper and crayons and dolls and a ball or two, things that made kids _kids_ instead of haunted little adult-ghosts.

Except.

"If I survived, right? I saw what happened to Yuusei. Those fuckers are totally lethal." Not that Crow minded dying for his kids – he'd told Yuusei as much, and he'd meant it – but he was damned if he was going to let them be used as bargaining chips.

"Those would be matters more properly discussed with the Director," the pissant said. "I'm well aware he and Fudou-san have had such a discussion already."

"I can take care of my kids without Security money," Crow spat back at him. "I've been doing it for five years." He'd still practically been a kid himself when he'd found the first of his pack – now a teenager himself and collecting kids of his own – offering things no child should have to offer in exchange for food. Crow hadn't always been able to provide more than some bread and a roof, and he'd gone hungry more than a few times to fill his kids' bellies, but he'd managed. And now he was doing it with only minimal help from Martha and no help at all from Yuusei or Kiryu or Jack, and as far as he knew none of his kids had ever missed a meal. Crow's pride could survive a trip to the red-light district to get the money for antibiotics; he wasn't sure it would survive a Security pay cheque.

"Perhaps so," the jackass answered, and Crow took a deep breath to calm himself just in case the damned clown decided to call his kids ratlings. He'd made his own choices; his kids' only crime was being born. "But I imagine even the most adaptable gutter rat would have difficulty caring for its young from an execution holding-cell."

The thought made Crow colder than he would ever have admitted aloud. "Fuck you."

The little bastard let out a mocking sigh. "Perhaps it's just as well. We wouldn't want Yuusei-kun concerned about the status of yet another of his friends, would we? It's far too easy for worry to distract a man in the heat of battle."

Crow knew the statement for what it was – just another attempt at keeping him off-balance and getting under his skin, now he had something the little bastard wanted – but knowing didn't keep Crow from remembering the horrible ashy colour of Yuusei's skin after his battle with Kiryu, or the memory of the dark thoughts that had kept Crow preoccupied while he waited to find out if his oldest friend, the one Crow valued more than life, was going to live or die. If Crow hadn't been watching that duel, Yuusei might still be laying where he'd fallen, calling by now for help that would never come. Somebody, as Crow had told Jack more than once, had to look out for Yuusei or one of these days he'd kill himself playing hero.

"I'm not a Signer." He'd wondered briefly if he might be – if Yuusei and Jack were, after all, why not him? – but he'd seen Yuusei's and Jack's arms both glowing during Yuusei's duel, and his own had remained blank and unmarked. "I didn't know Security was paying for bait now."

"Fudou-san clearly considers you to be of some kind of importance, or he wouldn't have shared so much information with you. But since you seem to have made your decision already, I'll have Security here directly – "

"You still haven't told me why I'm so important you're willing to pay me instead of killing me," Crow interrupted, before the bastard could pull out his holophone. "You want to screw me into it the way you did Yuusei, I think I at least deserve to know that." He glanced up at the window. There was light outside now, the kind of thin gray dawnlight he woke up to almost every morning. He fought down the anxiety that was trying to build again, now he wasn't distracted by being pissed as hell. It couldn't take that much longer to clear enough to leave. He'd be walking out of this room after all, if he was only patient. He took a deep breath and imagined Yuusei's hand over his own again. He'd slept through the worst of it; he'd be fine, if he could hang on to his head long enough to get through this.

"On the contrary, as I've just said, Fudou-san considers you a valuable ally. And though I'd hardly consider thieving an asset, I'm certain the Director could find a use for someone used to making fast escapes."

"And why should I be doing you favours again?" Crow found his gaze drawn again to the window and the promise of freedom beyond. The gray was thinner than ever, slowly fading back to the flat white glare of sun on concrete. Crow resisted the urge to make a run for the door; he suspected the little ass was serious about calling Security.

This time he wasn't even granted a response. Crow supposed he didn't really need one. He wasn't stupid enough to believe he'd get off this time. And he had people to protect. His kids, Martha, Martha's kids . . . and Yuusei, whether Yuusei believed he needed protecting or not. Crow let his eyes drop to his hands to give himself time to think – or at least, to resign himself to the inevitable. Execution . . . or working for a group he despised. Leaving his kids alone . . . or accepting what he couldn't stop thinking of as blood money. Crow had made a lot of decisions he didn't like making when it came to his kids, but this one – in part because it was so inevitable – he absolutely _hated_. He pulled himself up onto the desk again. He could see the flat black of an abandoned parking lot beyond the window. Beyond that was more commercial space; beyond that, the industrial strip, and in that strip, Crow's home. The ground was clear.

"I have to check on my kids before I even think about going anywhere."

"You'll be checking on no one," the little bastard answered. "You have somewhere to go, rat. Your charges can wait an hour."

Crow sighed and turned his back on the window. "Look. You want me to go with you and talk to Godwin? Fine. I'll go with you. I guess I don't have much of a choice. But I have six kids who're probably scared as fuck right now – " _scared, please, just scared, not dead or gone, please, whoever's out there listening, _ please - "and I need to make sure they're okay and take them to Martha's so they're not alone for days at a time while I'm off dueling or fighting Godzilla or whatever the hell it is Godwin's little group is doing. Mia's only four. Maybe people in the city do things different than we do here, but the way I was raised is no decent parent would leave a four-year-old alone with a nine-year-old for a babysitter for more than a couple of hours, okay? If you want me that bad, you're going to have to deal with me having kids that need to be took care of. I can't leave them alone that way."

"I think you forget your place, rat." The pissant looked vaguely annoyed. Crow shrugged.

"I'm asking for forty minutes to make sure my kids are safe. You think that's so much to ask?" He paused just long enough for the answer to occur to him. "Yeah, you probably do. You don't mind using them to get what you want, but you'd probably be happy if I got back from the Cracks of Doom or where-the-hell-ever and found out you had six less Satellites to worry about. Doesn't matter to you if I'm trying to raise my kids decent. You may not give a shit, but I do, and I want to see my kids. I think you can live for half an hour."

"You expect me to trust your word that you'll return to Security if I let you go? You must be mad." There was ire in the clown's voice, but that was all. Crow actually found himself wondering if maybe the bastard had kids of his own. He did his best to hold on to his own temper; the jackass would have been perfectly within his rights as a member of Security to permanently solve the Crow problem in Satellite, and he'd chosen not to. Maybe, Crow thought, Yuusei was onto something with his idea that all true duelists had a concept of honour. Crow shrugged.

"I can't tell you to believe me. All I can tell you is I can't leave my kids that way. And you can't send Security to pick them up. They hide from strangers."

The ass gave him a look Crow recognized from Yuusei. "An hour either way will make no difference to the welfare of your . . . charges."

In spite of his worry, Crow had to hide a grin. He would have loved it if his kids were really _his_, but it was fun to watch Security try to figure out what to call them when most of them were quite clearly too old to be his by blood. "So you expect me to go to the city, leave my kids here, talk to Godwin, and then . . . what? I get to come back here and take care of them? Why would he trust me any more than you do?"

"One assumes even a Satellite rat such as yourself has a concept of what a contracted occupation is," the little clown said. He looked closely at the window over the desk, then pulled his coat from under the door. "If you have any sense of what's good for you, you'll do as you're told while in the Director's pay."

Crow grabbed his cuffs from the pissant's chair and jammed them back into his pocket, then reached for the doorknob. The door swung open. Crow forced himself to wait for the other to walk through before following. The ass nodded toward the door. It was the first time he could ever remember following a member of Security while not cuffed or drugged and of his own free (if grudging) will, all too aware that he was in the process of doing something he'd sworn he'd never do, never, for anything.

And as they stepped out of the warehouse into a Satellite both changed and still, Crow was sure he could hear someone laughing.


End file.
